aluminium is the third most common chemical element on Earth after oxygen and silicon.Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska built his fortune by creating the largest aluminium company in the world RUSAL, which accounts for 11% of aluminium production and 13% of alumina production worldwide.

Deripaska and the RUSAL empire got their start at the Sayanogorsk aluminium smelter plant in south central Siberia, Russia, where the future billionaire was a director from 1994 to 1997.

The town of Sayanogorsk is located in south central Siberia. It is the home of one of the largest aluminium plants in the world.

Here is the Sayanogorsk aluminium smelter which served as a launch pad for Oleg Deripaska's career in the mid-1990s.

It all starts here - in the electrolysis shop. It employs the Hall–Héroult process for the production of aluminium which involves dissolving alumina in molten cryolite, and electrolysing the molten salt bath to obtain pure aluminium metal.

An aluminium smelter consists of a large number of pots, steel containers lined with carbon, in which the electrolysis takes place; smelting is run as a batch process, with the aluminium metal deposited at the bottom of the pots and periodically siphoned off.

Rows of pots line up, it seems, over the horizon. The production process is almost completely automated - alumina is filled in the pots from the top, after the end of the process cycle aluminium is released from a tap in a large bucket.

This crane can lift three-ton aluminium reduction cells. You need about two tons of alumina, a half-ton of carbon (for anode) and about 15 000 kWh of electricity to produce a ton of aluminium. Raw materials are imported from Guinea, Jamaica.

Electrolysis plant can be harmful. During the production of each ton of aluminium, 280 000 cubic meters of gas is emitted and contained through a filter system photographed here from afar.

A ladle with aluminium is put on a cart and carried into the foundry.

The foundry has an enormous furnace, which blasts heat of about 1,300°F.

Filling the oven with pure aluminium.

Next to the oven - additives for alloys: silicon, titanium as an alloying agent, zirconium ingots.

A worker monitors the composition of the additives. He makes a sample -- a small bar, the size of a hockey puck -- and sends it to a chemical laboratory for testing.

aluminium is shaped into ingots.

The aluminium is moving slowly through the pipeline and ends put in a pile like this one.

Perfectly stacked aluminium.

The sun shines through the side windows on the roof - almost theatrical light.

This is the control room for bigger project, where they make cylindrical ingots of several meters in length for the cable industry.

Metal is poured into the vertical forms.

Aluminium crystallizes in long cylinder-shaped ingots.

Crane picks up the warm aluminium ingot and transports them to a special table.

A worker puts the cylinders in a row.

And puts the factory stamp and the manufacturing date on them.

In another shop, the long cylinders are cut into pieces.

Made in Russia.

Some factory clients have ordered these gigantic cast aluminium ingot.

Casters take a short break for tea. There is a also a cafeteria where the workers spend about $2.20 for a meal.

A worker checks the analysis of the produced batch of aluminium.

The finished produced are being packed and ready to load in railway wagons.

The factory has been complaining about the rising cost of transportation.